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Albinus, that is a pretty silly comment from what knowledge I have....

If you delete something, Windows doesn't protect it or something, it just updates the FAT tables with the deleted data no longer existing, allowing the space to be used on other things. Restarting has Nothing to do with that.....

And thast why I say go into add/remove programs and start uninstalling programs you don't need, this way if Windows does need some space to write to (which is not uncommon!) that it will write to a blank space that you just created by doing some un-installations...

And of course when she attempts to instal a program that will let her find her lost programs, I would hope that by uninstalling a bunch of programs, you would decrease the likelyhood of writing over open spaces that contain the stuff she wants...

Thank you everyone for the replies to my post. I have been unable to find the program that would let me recover My Documents folder. I don't know why it let me delete it in the first place because I thought I was deleting a file within it but it did and it is a lesson well learned from this mistake that I will now learn to back up and double check what I am deleting.

Albinus, that is a pretty silly comment from what knowledge I have....

Well, from what knowledge I have it is a perfectly valid comment.

During system startup, Windows uses oodles more virtual memory than it normally does. This is to facilitate correct loading of the system drivers and the like. If a file is deleted, it sets the flag bit to "free". Guess what? Windows isn't picky on which area of the disk it writes to - it goes towards the beginining of the drive (because the transfer rate is faster).

This is how disk fragmentation occurs - when a file is deleted near the start of the disk, Windows puts something else in there when needed due to the extra speed gained by placing it there. When this occurs several times, it creates, you guessed it, file fragmentation.

I have been unsuccessful recovering lost data many a time because the machine was rebooted - when I have been able to recover deleted files it has always been when the user turned the machine OFF and left it off. Then start off a Windows 98SE boot disk and run the drive diagnostics/recovery utility.

Also remember that NTFS partitions index all files - you remove the index, NTFS doesn't have a clue where the recovered file goes

So every time you reboot - you're overwriting old deleted data more than likely - sorry ;)

Here's the description of the program, as stolen from the site:Begin cut & paste
What Drive Rescue can do for you:

Find any lost and deleted data on your drive (e.g. hard disk) even if the partition table is lost or the drive has been quick-formatted
Lost Data, that is the result of a system crash can also be recovered

What Drive Rescue can NOT do for you:

Find any data on a physically damaged drive

End cut & paste

I just made a quick test using the emergency version "rescue disk.zip" as it would seem handy to just keep a copy on a floppy for future use.
I conducted the test at the optimum time, ie. before I did anything on my system.
I deleted 9 .jpg files, and using this program, I successfully recovered 6 of them.
Not a stellar rating for sure, but it's free - and in an emergency, any data that it can retrieve is sure to be appreciated.

LOL - there is always the possibility that if I had read the help files, and tweaked the options, I might have had a higher success rate.
I don't know?
But at this point I would still think everyone should DL a copy, and keep it in their warchest - just in case.

The reason a diamond shines so brightly is because it has many facets which reflect light.